Results

Film and Almost Film 2001 presents a selection of 22 works by experimental film directors and artists who, influenced by film and television, have taken a new approach to their work in an attempt to create a new genre of ‘art film’. This genre has traditionally been linked, both in terms of technique and narrative, to European experimental film, which, produced with low or medium budgets, has tried to reorient film practices and aesthetics. Nonetheless, in the last few years, the connotations inherent in the idea of ‘art film’ have grown.

Interference is a programme of slides, documentaries and videos that tracks the evolution of the work by Perry Bard (Quebec, 1944) since she moved to New York in 1981. At the time, she was struck by the sight of homeless people sleeping in cardboard box shelters and the strong contrast with the surrounding sheets of glass and marble for which the city is known. Since then, Bard’s work has focused on the tenuous limits between public and private.

Historias sin argumento is a programme that presents the different stages in the filmography of Pere Portabella (Figueres, 1929) as a filmmaker and producer from the 1950s to today. His production company 59 Films was the driving force behind some of the cornerstone productions of Spain’s post-civil war critical realism (Los golfos, Carlos Saura; El cochecito, Marco Ferreri; Viridiana, Luis Buñel). At the end of the 1960s he was involved with the formation of the Barcelona School. His early films as a director, written in collaboration with the poet Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919-1998) (No compteu amb els dits and Nocturn 29), combine the cultural inheritance of the avant-garde with the languages that were coming onto the scene and shaking up the 1960s, and became known as ‘new cinema’. He was one of the key figures in the development of independent, alternative and clandestine cinema whose work was inextricably linked to his political opposition to Franco’s regime. Films like Vampir-Cuadecuc (1970), Umbracle (1971-1972) and his series of short films about Joan Miró (1969-1973), along with his participation in the Grup de Treball, were radical interventions in the cinema and art worlds.

Liliana Porter (Buenos Aires, 1941) is the only female Latin American artist whose work is included in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía’s audiovisual collection. For You/Para usted (1999) has its origins in a photographic series the artist did using toys and figurines going about their daily business, which Porter reformulated adding sound, rhythm and narration. From this point of view, the piece is closely connected to her earlier work in painting, drawing and photography, which already manifested the peculiar aspects of her personal narrative, far removed from traditional formulas. As Ana Tiscornia has noted, For You/Para usted is another step in the destabilisation of the conventional ideas of reality that prevails in Liliana Porter’s work. The video, originally shot in 16 mm, craftily uses the basic characteristics of the medium - emphasising time and movement - to present a scene that takes place almost completely off stage, in the mind of the viewer. In this presentation, Porter analyses her piece and illustrates the relationship between the video and the context of her work.

Inspired by the short story Beatles contra Duran-Duran, by the Cuban writer Mirta Yáñez (Havana, 1947), Madagascar (1994) by Fernando Pérez (Havana, 1944) revolves around the contradictions experienced by a university professor who has lost the ability to dream in Cuba during the 1990s economic crisis known as the ‘special period’ and her teenage daughter, who dreams of travelling to Madagascar. Their relationship, which is full of misunderstandings and mutual alienation, is depicted as an exercise in human communication. Its cinematic expressiveness, aesthetic pursuit and the humanity of its characters make Madagascar not only an innovative film, but also an important reading of the cinema of the times. This subtle story about the conflict between tradition and modernity has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Special Jury Prize and Special Cuban Critics Prize at the 16th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema (1994) and the World Cinema Prize for Best Latin American Film at the 12th Sundance Film Festival.

With B&W and Colour. Latin America: cinema, video and multimedia, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presents an up-to-date panorama of Latin American audiovisual art along with an exhibition entitled Agitation as Daily Ritual - Cartographies of Desire that brings 30 films and videos made by female artists between 1965 and 1987 to Spain for the first time. B&W and Colour crosses conventional boundaries, not only because of its unusual nature, variety and the contents of the selected works, but because of its pluralist inclination. Most of these pieces deal with the fragmentation of society into different ethnic, social and cultural groups and show us how to decode a culture that seems closer than it really is.